The total number of learners per teacher in the public education system, has risen from 27.4 to 29.8 between 2011 and 2021.
Provincial education departments must protect teacher appointments as much as possible to prevent deterioration in class sizes, researchers from Stellenbosch University (SU) said.
SU’s Teacher Demographic Dividend (TDD) project further found that while the country doesn’t currently have a shortage of teachers, a gap exists between the types of skills needed in the classroom and those produced at teacher training institutions.
The Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP) group at SU’s Economics department has spent three years working on the TDD project, generating insights into South Africa’s future teacher needs and current realities.
SU said: “While many teachers will be exiting the South African education system during the next six years, fortunately, South African universities have been training enough young teachers to provide replacements for those retiring.”
In terms of class sizes, national recommendations are for Grade 3 class sizes not exceeding 35, however the TDD project confirmed oversized classes across many provinces in 2017.
Nearly 7 out of 10 Grade 3 learners were in classes exceeding the nationally recommended limit of 35, while 2 out of 10 were in classes of more than 50.
Nationally, 6.4% of Grade 3 learners were in classes that exceeded 60.
The learner-educator ratio, which measures the total number of learners per teacher in the public education system, has also risen from 27.4 to 29.8 between 2011 and 2021.
“The fiscal squeeze has also affected funding availability for teacher appointments. A downward trend in real basic education spending in combination with increases in enrolment has led to a decline in per learner spending in real 2024/25 rands from a peak of R27 756 in 2019/20 to R26 437 in 2022/23, a decrease of 4.8%,” SU said.
The TDD project research also revealed that 50% of teachers choose the profession for its employment security and generous allocation of government bursaries, with only a minority initially doing so because of feeling an aptitude or specific dispensation to teach.
However, supplementary qualitative research revealed that many teachers eventually considered their profession a calling.
The project also uncovered several issues shaping current teachers’ views of teaching as a profession. These included a perception of poor learner motivation, discipline and knowledge, compounded by curriculum issues and school infrastructure.
SADTU provincial secretary, Sibongile Kwazi, said they have received confirmation from the provincial education department that a number of retirements and resignations have been received.
“While this opens up spaces for newly qualified teachers, the issue we have is that we have fewer resources of experienced teachers, but it also results in brain drain. We desperately need the experience of the older teachers so that they can mentor the other generation of educators,” said Kwazi.
RESEP group lead, Prof Servaas van der Berg, hoped the research insights can help to inform policy in a direct way.
“The data has helped us understand how training institutions are not always preparing teachers with the right skills to enable learning in the classroom.
“It has also helped us to get to grips with the extent of large class sizes better.
“The current fiscal squeeze on all social delivery sectors will not help to improve class sizes as there will not be funding available to appoint more teachers.”
Cape Times